When I'm Gone
by ElesaryAyres
Summary: Like orbiting songs, they never seem to stay together, yet are never able to completely separate. Song fic... rights go to rightful owners, not me


When I'm Gone

**There's another world inside of me **

**That you may never see**

That night in the forest, when Jeremy burned alive inside of that car, Mary-Lynnette had relished his screams. She had thought _this is who I am, the girl who is supposed to hold Ash's hand._ But that thought had the rest of her rebelling, and she was sick in the bushes because_ who the hell thinks like that? _

**There're secrets in this life**

**That I can't hide **

Ash broke as he held Mary-Lynnette's hair as she puked in the bushes, understanding that he had just lost her. _Burn in hell, you bastard!_ He viciously thought at Jeremy's corpse. She would never join his world now, he knew that with an agonizing clarity, and now he had three choices, leave her now, watch her die later or change her without permission. Any way, he lost her. _Better this way,_ he thought bitterly,_ I don't deserve her anyway, and I couldn't make her happy even if I did._

**Somewhere in this darkness**

**There's a light that I can't find**

Ash didn't see the stars before he met her, and now, he couldn't bear to look up for too long, because there was a chance that she was watching the same one and that was just too much for him to bear. He just wasn't strong enough for that, he was still twisted enough that it didn't feel right to look at her stars. So he stuck to the underworld he used to rule, but he didn't belong there either. He wasn't twisted enough for that anymore. So he lurked in the shadows, saving little blonde girls from bars and searching for _something_ to tell him he was doing something right, _for the first time in his life._

**Maybe it's too far away…**

**Or maybe I'm just blind…**

**Or maybe I'm just blind…**

Mary-Lynette couldn't tear herself from the stars anymore then she could before she had met Ash, but now they had no meaning. Now, she noticed the space between the stars. _Doesn't matter how bright they shine if they're all alone. _She wondered whether she was blinded now, or if she was finally seeing stars for what they really were,_ lonely._

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**Hold me when I'm scared**

**And love me when I'm gone**

The first time he returned, a year after he left her, they still weren't ready and he felt that as he held her in his arms. They lingered together for weeks and he savored the feel of her, the scent of her hair, the color of her eyes under the new moon and early dawn. She didn't have to say anything, but just under a month later he left again, pressing one last kiss to her upturned mouth, heart breaking with silent tear that traced Mary-Lynnette's face. "We'll try again next year." He told her, knowing it was still on him to be better; he could trust her to let him know when he was purified and better and _what she needed._

**Every thing I am**

**And everything in me**

**Wants to be the one**

**You wanted me to be**

Mary-Lynnette clung to his last words so her fears wouldn't overwhelm her completely. _What if he doesn't come back?_ He had changed so much when he was… away. She saw it in the calmness in his eyes, the reverence when he held her. He had knowledge and experience in his voice that he didn't have last time. _What if he's ready for me, but I am not ready for him? _That fall, she went off to college across the country.

**Ill never let you down**

**And even if I could**

**I'd give up everything**

**If only for your good**

Ash just hoped he hadn't let her down. He prayed she didn't think he had whored that last year away. He _needed_ her to know he had been true and mended bridges long burned. _But maybe it wasn't enough. Maybe there weren't enough nails in the world to fix the charred remains of old acquaintances. _But maybe that was what he deserved, and losing her was the only way to cleanse the dirt and darkness in his soul. All he still had to do was accept it. But he still wasn't strong enough. _Always had been a selfish bastard._

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**You can hold me when I'm scared**

**You wont always be there**

**So love me when I'm gone**

When he returned a year later he was thinner, and held her loosely, but with the same desperation she remembered. He told her he was working now with a wry smile, the twist in his lips laughing at himself. Eyes dark and unreadable, even for her. She had her college transfer prepared so she could follow him wherever he went. "I'm saving the world, Mare, you cant come." He said it softly and kindly and implacably, eyes devouring her face like she was water and he had been wandering the desert for weeks. _Maybe he just enjoyed the flush of blood in my cheeks._ So she swallowed her hurt and forced a smile, though she was sure he felt it through their bond. "Next year, then."

**Love me when I'm gone**

He couldn't think of her while he was working. He travelled across the world multiple times, fighting the dragons he promised her he would. The only difference was that she was ready for his brand of love. Now he was the one causing the separation. He often caught sight of James watching him sadly as he volunteered for the most dangerous jobs and recognized when Thierry began blocking him from taking them. "Why are you trying to kill yourself?" Jade asked, "You're hurting her everyday you stay away." His sisters didn't understand that maybe he was punishing her because that was the only way he could punish himself. _Maybe I'm finally strong enough, selfless enough to give her up._

**When your education X-Ray**

**Cannot see under my skin**

**I wont tell you a damn thing**

**That I could not tell my friends **

She waited all night even though she had known by ten that he wasn't going to show up. She laid there for hours on the ground _like Bella Freaking Swan_ as her heart broke and then froze by degrees. She would never stop loving him, that golden thread could never entirely be extinguished, but maybe she could make her life without him. _Maybe they were the example of the exception: soul mates who just couldn't take the pressure of the connection._

**Roaming through this darkness **

**I'm alive but I'm alone**

He still looked in desperation when his sisters visit because her scent clings to them the way he clings to her memory. "You look terrible," Kestrel commented every time she saw him, "as bad as she does." He barely registered that anymore, but he noticed the first time she didn't add that last part and he begged Thierry for weeks for more active and dangerous missions. He loved throwing himself in recklessly, prepared for his death as he sensed that Mary-Lynnette would survive his passing _and maybe be happy._ He wanted that for her _as long as he didn't have to see it._

**Part of me is fighting this**

**But part of me is gone**

Mary-Lynnette didn't say no when that nice boy in her philosophy class asked her out, even though the part of her-_most of her_- that belonged to Ash bellowed at the betrayal. "He's killing himself," Rowan had told her sadly, "I can't help him." Maybe they were both crying out for help with their actions, pretending they were moving on even though Ash refused to die and Mary-Lynnette gave up nothing but a kiss goodnight that she dreaded. He broke up with her after a few months, realizing that he couldn't make her happy, and already in love enough to let her go. Kestrel showed up at her dorm room at 3 in the morning, tears falling like stars to tell her that the rip in her chest hadn't been imagined. _Ash was slipping away._

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**Hold me when I'm scared**

**And love me when I'm gone**

He watched the blade go into him with resignation, knowing that he took it for someone else's soul mate, so they could have the happiness he had never deserved. His thoughts, as always, drifted to his Mare, and he thought about reaching for her, but she deserved more than the jagged edges that would leave inside her. With trembling finger tips he reached for the ragged stained photo he had stolen from Mark. He watched it till his world grew dark, and then he searched for the stars.

**Everything I am**

**And everything in me**

**Wants to be the one**

**You wanted me to be**

She barely snatched him in time, forcing her warmth and love into his cold body as if she could force him to breath. She felt his readiness and desire to die and disregarded it. _I'll kill myself if you leave, _she threatened, _and it will be your fault because you didn't love me enough to stay._ Without exception the cruelest and most selfish thing she could say. Deep in her soul she wondered if he could forgive her, recognizing she was doing the equivalent of him changing her without consent. She wondered if she would forgive him had their roles been reversed.

**I'll never let you down**

**Even if I could**

**I'd give up everything**

**If only for your good**

Her words forced him to claw his way back to the surface gratefully, knowing he was finally doing _something_ to make her happy. He wasn't willing to live for himself or his family or even to save the world, _but for her?_ There wasn't even a question in his mind. He reveled in the pain from his chest, every beat of agony proved his heart was beating, proved he was returning to her.

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**You can hold me when I'm scared**

**You wont always be there**

**So love me when I'm gone**

His eyes were bluer than she remembered when they finally opened and she pulled his hand to her face and inhaled the scent she thought she had forgotten and realized it was always imprinted in her bones. He stared at her soundlessly, coldly, but his fingers moved against her cheek and that felt like reverence. Tears coursed down her face and he brought one, suspended on one long pale finger to his mouth like it was love.

**Or maybe I'm just blind…**

To him, everything she was had been synonymous with beautiful for as long as she had been entrenched in his mind. It wasn't something he could fight, and even if he could he wouldn't because she was the only pure and clean thing he had ever had and though it shamed him he _coveted_ her the way he did. But now, now she shone like his own personal angel, with her own light that she shed from her eyes with tears. And when he tasted them on his tongue _they tasted like love._

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**Hold me when I'm scared**

**And love me when I'm gone**

He pulled her into his arms and they fit together like puzzle pieces, fit together like a broken plate, fit together the way they always had, but this time, she couldn't imagine pulling away or letting him. _She was never, ever letting him go again._

**Everything I am**

**And everything in me **

**Wants to be the one**

**You wanted me to be**

He swallowed broken glass and bled her name out his mouth like a prayer to a God he hadn't felt in _years_ and it tasted beautiful and sacred and _whole_ as if the torn bits of his soul had not just reknit themselves but had regenerated completely, without even the memory of the oil he had dipped it into time after time until it was oily and stained and left a bad taste in the back of his throat and made him afraid to kiss Mary-Lynette _incase he was contagious._

**I'll never let you down**

**Even if I could**

**I'd give up everything**

**If only for your good**

"I'm never leaving you again," she whispered against his lips in a promise she was finally ready to keep and now it was on her. Now it was up to him whether he wanted them to be together and she would never doubt that he loved her, but maybe it was too much, and maybe that was all right and maybe they were like stars, orbiting perpetually but never coming together, bright enough on their own.

**So hold me when I'm here**

**Right me when I'm wrong**

**You can hold me when I'm scared**

**You wont always be there**

**So love me when I'm gone**

"I don't want you around this war," he said softly "and if that means I'm broken without you then so be it, this is something I need to do so I can hold my head high when I ask you to marry me, so you can be proud of me." His eyes begged her wait for him, but he hoped she could see he wouldn't blame her for walking away even as his arms formed shackles around her.

**Love me when I'm gone**

Her throat closed like a vise because she knew he was right but _it hurt_ and she was _tired of always feeling that a part of her was missing._ But she knew nothing else but waiting.

**Love me when I'm gone**

He know longer took suicide missions, because her heart was placed just behind his and he would do nothing to jeopardize her.

**When I'm gone**

She goes back to college and remembers how to sleep.

**When I'm gone**

He looks at the stars now, and it no longer hurts because they remind him he has forever.


End file.
